The $100 million acquisition now looks so clearly what many expected from the start. That the coffee giant cared less about anything La Boulange offered than a brand name and a bit of added cache to the chain’s superbly boring pastries and fresh food. Today they have a new brand, but the products are as lousy as they have ever been.

While today’s story in SFGate suggests that Starbuck’s discarding of the well-established cafes is unusual its worth reading for the quotations from Adriano Paganini, founder of SF Bay area’s well regarded Pasta Pomodoro chain (now sold) and burger palace Super Duper Burger. What’s impressive about xxx is that his burger joints are indeed super but lack the super sized bullshit of so many of its high priced burger places (you know who they are and we’re not just talking about the one that claims to be a shack).

In the story he perfectly sums up Starbuck’s integration of La Boulange. ““I go to Starbucks, and all of a sudden there are La Boulange pastries, but they are not really La Boulange pastries. They are smaller, crappier and more expensive than they used to be.”